How to turn desktop icons on or off by creating a shortcut or hotkey?

Create a shortcut or hotkey to turn the desktop icons on or off

If you’ve got many icons messing up on your desktop, you might like a rapid way to turn them off by avoiding context menu; Here’s a rapid and simple way to create a shortcut or hotkey to turn them on or off.

Make a Shortcut to Toggle the Desktop Icons

The solution comes through a little utility written by one of the Desktop Sidebar programmers (an alternate sidebar including many of modules). Simply so we’re unambiguous, this utility does the equal thing as a right-click on the desktop and toggling the Show Desktop Icons item.

Setting Up the Shortcut

The first thing you’ll require to do is download the HideDesktopIcons application and save it wherever other than the desktop, if possible wherever where it won’t be deleted. You could put it below your Program Files folder if you wanted to.

If you’re with Windows 7, all you require to do is right-click on the file and select Pin to Taskbar or Pin to Start Menu, depending on where you like it. We’ll place it on the Start Menu so we can allocate a hotkey to it.

Still Using the Quick Launch Bar?

If you’re with a before version of Windows and you’d wish to place it on the Quick Launch bar, you can do that go to Explorer and entering the following into the address bar. Simply keep in mind that shortcuts on the Quick Launch bar don’t let shortcut keys, so you’ll required to copy it to the Start Menu too.

Shell: Quick Launch

So now you have a shortcut that can be used for rapid access….

Creating the Hotkey

To allocate a hotkey, we’re going to imagine that you have pinned the shortcut to the Start Menu. Directly right-click on the shortcut in the Start Menu and select Properties to allocate a hotkey. Use Ctrl+Alt+D because it’s easy to keep in mind.

You can access the desktop icons through a shortcut icon or shortcut key.

Supporting Files (If required)

If you get an error when you try to run this application, you most likely need to have the Microsoft C++ runtime installed, which you can get from the following link: